Colorblind hockey player keeps going offsides
Even though Kaiser, 32, wholly
understands the rules of hockey, he routinely gets confused as to which lines
are which colors, leading to multiple whistles for offsides during nearly every
one of Kaiser’s shifts. Just last weekend in a league game against the rival
Bourque Chops, Kaiser skated offsides an astonishing six times in one shift.
”Being colorblind has certainly taken a
toll on my development as a hockey player,” Kaiser said after a game which
featured 29 whistles attributed solely to the hapless forward. “It’s just so
darn confusing out there on the ice. I mean, what’s red to you is blue to me
and vice versa. It’s like bizarro world. How can I be expected to stay onsides
when I can’t tell if the line I just crossed was really red or blue?”
In an effort to combat the obvious
conflict of Kaiser’s visual disability with the rules of hockey, Elsinore
Brewery teammates have gone to great lengths to solve the maddening problem.
Team captain Mike Lunderbergh thought he found the solution upon finishing his
box of Fruity Pebbles late last month.
”I’m just polishing off a box of my
favorite cereal when I notice something amid the crumbs,” Lunderbergh said.
“There it was. The solution to all of our problems – 3-D glasses. It seemed
like a great idea and it was to a certain extent. The glasses solved the red
line-blue line problem, but it sure did a number of Geoff’s depth perception.
He wasn’t going offsides anymore, but he was constantly running into the
boards. Back to the drawing boards, I guess.”
When the 3-D glasses experiment failed,
the Elsinore Brewery squad tried several other tactics to handle the issue,
including hypnosis, behavior modification, looking into retinal transplants and
playing Geoff only when they had a faceoff in the offensive zone. When all
those strategies failed, the team turned to league director Sam Lombardo.
”The Elsinore Brewery team came to me
with a drastic suggestion to help rid the league of the offsides epidemic that
has plagued it since Kaiser started playing hockey,” Lombardo said.
“Lunderbergh asked the rink manager to re-paint our lines in more
Kaiser-friendly colors like green and orange. That just wasn’t going to happen.
We’d be the laughingstock of the ice arena world.”
The majority of Kaiser’s teammates have
been nothing but supportive as Kaiser has battled his colorblindness on the
ice. Some Elsinore Brewery players, however, seem to be losing patience.
“Listen, I like Geoff. I respect Geoff. I
just don’t understand Geoff,” veteran defenseman Karl Coughlin said. “How hard
is it to figure out that the center line is red and the other two lines are
blue? Seriously, I’ve had just about enough of this. If he doesn’t quit, I
quit.”
Other team members have taken a more
pragmatic, look-on-the-bright-side approach to the problems that Kaiser has
brought to the ice.
“I’m as annoyed by all the whistles as
the next guy, but I’ll tell you this, I’m getting really good at taking
faceoffs,” center Stefan Gellar said.
Kaiser claims he didn’t anticipate the
impact his visual disability would have on the Elsinore Brewery team and the
SuperRink D League.
“I really didn’t expect my colorblindness
to be a problem in hockey,” Kaiser said. “I mean, it’s never really been an
issue before...aside from my short-lived career as a high school quarterback
when I passed to the wrong team because I thought they’re wearing blue when
they were really wearing red. Oh, and every four years during election time,
the whole red state-blue state thing gets really confusing. Come to think of
it, maybe the reason I get pulled over all the time for running red lights has
something to do with me having trouble seeing red. I guess I should have seen
this coming.”
Lunderbergh has called a team meeting to
address the future of Kaiser on the Elsinore Brewery team. League officials are
anxiously awaiting the team’s decision.
“As
officials, we need to stay as impartial as possible,” linesman Jim Backlin
said. “But the sooner Kaiser is done as a hockey player, the better. I’ve gone
through 14 whistles this season. My whistle budget is through the roof.”
“Dekes & Dangles” is a satirical look at the hockey world
from the mind of the Let’s Play
Hockey editor...with a comic strip and word search
thrown in to fill space